March 19, 2001

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Secret CIO:
No Such Thing As A 'Free' PC

The example we set can have a much broader impact than we can ever imagine

By Herbert W. Lovelace   (lovelace@home.com)

was quite pleased when InformationWeek recently ran a cover story on the role of personal values in information technology ("A Question Of Ethics," Feb. 19, p. 38). Life doesn't always provide clear signposts to help us make the myriad decisions that face an IT professional, and this point hasn't received the attention it should in national publications. I was even more delighted when Stephanie Stahl, the editor of this magazine, in a follow-up column repeated a comment I made to her that my rule about business ethics is as follows: If I'd be embarrassed to tell my family at dinner what I'd done, I wouldn't do it.

I had two reactions to her column. The first was to feel flattered that she thought enough of what I'd said to print it--Stephanie is an extremely talented journalist and an even nicer person, demonstrating that you can be a decent human being as well as a success in your field. My second reaction was to remember a conversation I had at lunch one day with Jerry, our appropriation king (see "It's Good To Be The King," Oct. 19, 1998, p. 204), in which I made the very same statement about personal ethics.

Jerry is in charge of getting all of our capital appropriation requests for Sid Gornish, our less-than-beloved CFO. Jerry makes all of us who want to spend the company's money jump through hoops, asking mostly (but not completely) nonsensical questions. However, to give him his due, while you can get very annoyed at his tendency to act as if everyone is trying to cheat the company, he does do a good job identifying poorly conceived expenditures.

I'd never spent much time with Jerry other than in meetings, but one day, because we were next to each other in the cafeteria lunch line, we sat at the same table. We chatted about appropriations until we were both bored, and then he asked me some questions about PCs and what it costs to buy one using the plan I'd set up for our employees.

I explained the pricing as well as I could. When I finished, he smirked and told me that he had bought a new portable computer for his son, a junior in high school, for a lot less money at one of the electronic mega-stores in the area. I sighed and went into my pitch about the features of one brand vs. another, different chip speeds, close-out pricing, and so on, when he said, "No, you don't understand, I got it for free--so there's no way your plan could've gotten it for me cheaper."

I was puzzled. I knew that some chains offer 100% rebates on selected software or blank CD-ROMs as a way of building store traffic, but I'd never heard of giving away computers. "How did you do that?" I asked. "I've seen ads where a store provides a printer with a computer purchase, but never a computer for free."

But Jerry had found a way. "What happened was that the place was mobbed," he said. "It was a big sale. We found the right portable at the right price, so I bought it for him. Things were kind of hectic at the pickup counter, and the clerk was so busy I guess he forgot to take the pickup ticket when he gave me the machine. Maybe he thought one of the other guys at the counter took it. Anyway, I came back a few hours later by myself, found a different clerk, and turned in the slip for another machine. Then, the next day, I returned one of the portables for a refund," he concluded smugly.

At that point, I didn't know what to say. Finally, I commented to Jerry that what he did wasn't very ethical and asked him if he wouldn't be embarrassed to tell his story around the family dinner table.

Jerry looked at me in amazement. With a laugh, he said, "Embarrassed? No way. That night at dinner, I bragged how smart I was."

It was a few months later that Jerry and I were again sitting together at lunch, this time with a few other people. Jerry was busy telling everyone how upset he was with his son. It seems he'd been caught cheating in a high school class exam and now faced problems with his college applications. Jerry shook his head and said, "I have no idea why he was so stupid."

Maybe Jerry doesn't have a clue as to why his son was so stupid, but I have a theory.

Herbert W. Lovelace shares his experiences (changing most names, including his own, to protect the guilty) as CIO of a multibillion-dollar international company. Send him E-mail at lovelace@home.com and read his online column at informationweek.com, where he'll provide real--and sometimes whimsical--answers to your questions.

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